Huffington Post: Huntington Hospital Nurses Defy Union-Busting Campaign (vote is Wednesday)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/huntington-hospital-nurses-defy-union-busting-campaign_b_7051072.html

Peter Dreier Become a fan
E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Occidental College

Posted: 04/12/2015 10:46 pm EDT Updated: 04/12/2015 10:59 pm EDT

Dolly Wilson, a leader in the campaign to organize the registered nurses at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California, was shocked to read a text message she received from another registered nurse. While Wilson, who works in the emergency room, was off duty, someone had put a letter in every nurse's mailbox in her unit, accusing Wilson of taking a skiing vacation in Utah paid for by the California Nurses Association (CNA), the union that is helping the Huntington nurses gain a voice at work.

"The letter couldn't be further from the truth" said the 30-year old Wilson, explaining that she and her boyfriend did take a ski vacation to Colorado (not Utah), but that they paid for it themselves "with our hard earned money!"

The letter is only one of many insults and assaults that the pro-union nurses have faced in their efforts to improve working conditions and patient care at the 123-year old 625-bed hospital named for Henry E. Huntington, a turn-of-the-century railroad baron.

Since the union drive began last May, the hospital has engaged is a nasty and expensive union-busting effort, paying a bevy of experienced and high-priced union-busting firms and consultants - including Littler Mendelson, IRI, and Genevieve Clavreul of Outside the Box Solutions -- to harass and intimidate nurses and undermine their organizing efforts.

FULL story at link.